welcome back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour when talking about the economy everyone is always. g.d.p. that is obsessing over our nation's gross domestic product really the best way to talk about the growth and those state of the american economy and it is and it's daily take not even a month after the election and republicans are already had plans to steal the presidency in two thousand and sixteen what is everybody done once and for all the stop these attacks on the right of the people to vote.

and screw news how dare someone speak up about gun violence in america well it's exactly what n.b.c. sports commentator bob costas did during sunday's broadcast of sunday night football process was addressed in the tragic murder suicide involving kansas city chiefs player j. vaughn belcher here's what to say. our current done culture with lock wrote ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy and that more convenient store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead handguns do not enhance our safety they exacerbate our flaws attempt to escalate arguments and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it in the coming days javan belcher's actions and their possible connection to football will be analyzed who knows but here wrote jason whitlock is what i believe if javan belcher didn't possess

a gun he and cassandra perkins would both be alive today. and here's what caused this didn't say he didn't say the government should take away people's guns he didn't say we should repeal the second amendment and he didn't call for limits on gun ownership still the conservative media and the blogosphere load up with fiery outrage towards cost to us and fox news is still talking about it today so if we really come to a point in this country where uttering the word gun is akin to screaming out the f. word for all they hear joining me now to talk more about this is the neil mccabe editor of the guns and patriots column for human events online in the elven i've been all fired up tom have you been absolutely what he was quoting a fox sports guy well you know not all fox is right fox's fox yeah exactly got that so you know what's wrong with what bob costas said i mean just fundamentally what's what's wrong with the a you know if this was if this was sort of you we were talking about entertainment

we would say that this was sort of one of these moves to exploit a tragedy and sort of drum up the crowd and really exploit a tragedy given his girlfriend used to go shooting at the fire in germany and he had the ball with that he had several guns odds are she had a gun to be able to or having having a gun and having a gun in your hand at the moment somebody else points one at you are two completely different things i imagine she would have if she had if she's had a gun. with her at that moment that's my point she may have lived right so we're all supposed to walk around the garden or handle it oh well that's your choice it should be your right. to literally it will there's nothing you don't even know that makes one raise it this is what you're going to say i mean to say just because he had a gun doesn't mean the becomes a maniac i mean he could have he could have choked her he could have stabbed her he could have shot her with a crossbow but he didn't make it so much easier it's like that rather than you know having to actually feel the life go out of somebody or have you know somebody struck the books easier than you think. you know what you know i've seen people

shot i've never seen anybody killed many other way but i think what caused this was trying to do in the same thing with with the whitlock is they were trying to sort of set the table for this sort of movement to have responsible gun ownership and then responsible gun ownership is sort of that next step that slippery slope that we're worried about that race to the bottom that brings us to gun like one of us none of us can drive cars. i mean why is that we very rationally say you know the right to drive a car a public road is a constitutionally protected right it's right there in the constitution that one of the emerging powers of congress is to raise taxes and spend money for public roads sure the public can use them there's an implicit right to use roads but if you want to take six thousand pounds of steel and move that seventy miles an hour down the road you have to prove your proficiency you have to have a driver's license why not say if you want to have forty five grains of of lead in a gun they can travel with a mile of muzzle velocity of seven hundred forty seven miles an hour yes that you

have to also prove proficiency you have to have a license to have a couple of things with it but i think the first thing i'd tell you is i'm not sure we need to go through all this stuff to get a driver's license i think that driving a car should be just like riding a horse you do need a license to ride a horse and i think it's just a government bureaucracy that is or has horses people didn't die because horses ran into the well i mean horses there are so i don't because you are an animal i don't accept that premise about the cars but as for guns you have a very tragic home two thousand people a year die from cars in the united states in car accidents yes. so what do we do well how many people dying our artists. you know come on oh i mean christopher reeve's a dear their horses can be dangerous too yeah why don't disagree is one of the most more dangerous sports but you know even there before any rational person is going to let you get out of your size horse or if you go out and ride a horse you might buy daughters into dressage you want to ride a horse of a stable or something they're going to want some demonstration of proficiency ball i think about i think about the n.r.a. which which we can compared to the k.k.k.

which was absolutely beyond the pale the n.r.a. is the leading organization in training for gun rights. and you know i don't say i don't disagree about its own remarks i'm so remember and so the and so the children are not just you know i think neal we're we're out of time i think we're both at our points i appreciate it charlie i'm going to be with you good to have you with. the best of the rest of news let's face it americans in particular washington policymakers are obsessed with g.d.p. numbers whatever new law comes out of washington there's a debate over how it's going to affect economic growth how's how is going to affect g.d.p. the so-called fiscal cliff looming every proposal put forward by the two parties is scored by the c.v. of the congressional budget office and by economists to determine what effect that

will have on our gross domestic product but its g.d.p. really the best way to measure growth and progress mr jones joins me now he's the common resource director of food and water watch which welcome thanks tom great to have you with us. adbusters ran an incredible ad a couple of years ago in which they the graphically show this but they said that every time a forest is cut down g.d.p. goes up every time somebody is diagnosed with cancer g.d.p. goes up right every time there's an oil spill g.d.p. goes up if and then they end up by saying if we're going. to survive we economists have to learn how to subtract g.d.p. is a fairly crummy measure of the health of a society is robert kennedy pointed out back in the sixty's yeah that's definitely true you know g.d.p. was never intended to be a measurement of social well being or the overall health of the society it was meant as a very limited measurement of the production of goods and services in a given amount of time in the country so it really is just

a measurement and you know negative things like you just mentioned cutting down forests you know defense spending accounts every every bit as much as you know building a school break can treating cancer right now somebody gets hit by a car gee g.d.p. just went up the street because they're going to have to get treated at hospitals going to add one hundred thousand bucks to g.d.p. that's right but we have to be careful when we start to criticize g.d.p. is that what we seek to replace it with isn't something that's going to be even more harmful for us and you know right now we're seen some economists suggest some alternatives to g.d.p. that actually could be more harmful because they take this kind of this market paradigm this market idea that everything else they have a market value and they begin to apply it to things which quite frankly don't right now so not only is there we talk for example for example carbon pollution. for example water that isn't currently being traded on a water market. so these are not part of g.d.p.

well arguably carbon pollution is part of the murray and arguably it is but if it had anything to do with hurricane sandy that is a jacked up g.d.p. grew this is true but chua as as that piece of carbon pollution as that quantity of carbon you can't go down to a store and buy it you can't go out and and terry suggested we should be able to i mean s.e.'s net up in trade no i'm not actually what i'm suggesting it would work for sulfur dioxide this is george herbert walker bush his plan was to reduce sulfur dioxide reduce the acid rain by by doing a cap and trade on sulfur dioxide he did it and with. in five six years we had so overt acts that way way down plus the banks are still making money trading well you know hey good for the banks what happened with sulfur dioxide with that rain really was the fact that they had a really strong cap that ratcheted down the amount of software that could be put it was the essence of cap and trade is over time you reduce the saleability of that product essence of cap yeah right now it's the trading component that then is where the banks get to make their money sure and which i would contend is the bit that we

don't need. ok so you're just advocating a naked carbon tax no i would be in this instance advocating getting back to how we used to regulate pollution in this country if you take a look for instance at the clean water act right when it was instituted forty years ago it said you can't pollute so we just say this is right or this is wrong and force it without you want to find it economic without trying to quantify it economically and then say so so you know the king of bhutan came up with this gross happiness index and it's a gross national happiness and kids are familiar with it and there is a bunch of pieces to it you know how many people are educated how people are happy how long marriages are last seen you know how long people are living why not come up with something like that for our country if we're going to be setting goals that congress is going to if the cvo is going to score legislation based on something right why not use the king the king of gross national happiness index instead of the g.d.p. but you know the boot means system is different than what's being talked about by economists here what they do there is just what you said they do

a survey of you know several thousand of their citizens and they ask them how happy are you how do you have access to these things do you not and then they compile that data and they determine how happy they are it's not a measurement and it's certainly not an expansion of the market it's not an introduction of more market forces into their society rather than anything no it shouldn't ok if anything it's an attempt to stop that right and what what i'm concerned about and what my organization is concerned about is that when it's good to criticize g.d.p. . g.d.p. counts things that it shouldn't count the things we talked about or at least the extent that we think that inflating g.d.p. is a good example you're right but you can come up with an alternative that doesn't then say the way to solve this problem is to make the market be even broader than what it is to take things that we currently value not because they have an economic value but because they're just valuable to us right we don't want to subsume that under the market we don't want to reward the fund so it's either is there

a solution and you have well i think that there is in it's a little more complicated which is maybe what people don't want to do to look at it but you know we have the gini coefficient which measures inequality we can look and say hey you know what we're one of the most on equal societies when it comes to distributing but we know that the principal thing that affects that is taxation it is yes and so we can do you know taxes we can institute a financial transaction tax right right and we can go after some of those that are going to address this is a marginal tax rate we can do a variety of different things there right but beyond that you know we have ecological footprints carbon footprints water footprints where you can look and see how much of these harmful effects are being felt and again you don't have to use the market in order to do that you can do this without so it was separated out to say ok right now we're we're not going to live with this exactly very well done thank you very much i appreciate it mitch thank you for trying to. have the two the after the break the two thousand and twelve election may have come and gone but republicans across the country are already laying out their plans to rig the two

thousand and sixteen presidential election what is to happen in this country so that everyone's right to vote is protected from the right wing's never ending a war vote. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harkin welcome to the big

picture. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about what you sir are a fool you know what kind of my terrorist cells in your neighborhood all want to give us a feature isn't a liberal and the christian point you. can see your beliefs about it. if you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because their profit driven industry that sells of sensationalistic garbage because that breaking news i mean martin and we're going to break this that.

it's the good the bad and the very very good dodgin asli ugly the good elizabeth warren was revealed yesterday. it's senator like warren will have a seat on the highly influential senate banking committee which is probably the worst nightmare of the wall street backyards in fact the finance industry is so afraid of warren for the spend a whopping six million dollars trying to defeat her in the election seat of the banking committee one will be able to help protect the landmark dodd frank financial reform law from being watered down i was c.e.o. on wall street pretty scared right out and senator elect warren is ready and

willing to take the american people harmful actions of the big banks to raise the bad ted nugent shortly after president obama was reelected the conservative rock star called welfare recipients quote gluttonous soulless pigs who feast on whatever fed zilla provides and quote well less than a month later nugent is again attacking americans who are forced to rely on government benefits to survive in a column in the washington times nugent writes it will fare recipients should have their right to vote taken away writing that no america welfare should have a right to vote for tax increases on those americans who are working and paying taxes to support them that's insane. you know the only thing really insane here is that nugent actually thinks people care what he gets and the very very ugly greg gutfeld gutfeld is one of the magical talking heads on fox news is the five on the show yesterday the group was talking about the job on belcher murder or suicide

tragedy bob eckel boxes to open liberal broaden the discussion to gun violence in america as a whole. didn't like it especially didn't like it when back and suggested that thousands of kids are killed every year by gun violence and take a look. there were more kids killed in our country that our but i can't find a way but you sure give me a g.a.o. the five eighty five or seventy one what what do you think that's from what did you just say what it is what it is what a seventeen year old was killed by a gun would you call that bob that's called. by which one is that across the aisle that you know you get out you say that makes you proud that's ridiculous that's right in the back of a liberal a lot of care about guy might not. want to talk about alligator injuries combined have less desk you'll be able to figure hey if seventeen year olds in gangs just beyond why she ever said to you as a gang member they all get killed right. about gang but where does most of the gang bias occur i say gang violence look i'm right on this. the incredibly misleading

blanket statement gutfeld made about gun gang violence in chicago is bad enough but apparently thinks that children dying at the hands of senseless gun violence in america is a laughing matter that it's very very. small democrats and progressives focus on getting out the vote every two years come election time republicans focus on suppressing the vote every single year every single day. and less than a month after this last election republicans are all already looking ahead to two thousand and fourteen thousand and sixteen and beyond for example former new hampshire governor john sununu want to romney's top political surrogates during the election earlier this week explained to forum goers in new hampshire why president

obama was reelected he said aggressively got out the base somewhere a base the base of their base that's dependent to a great extent economically on government policy and government programs so no was pushing the republican talking point that we'll be hearing a lot for the next two years or more we've heard similar explanations for romney's loss from a parade of conservative glee rush limbaugh who compared the president to santa claus bill o'reilly who said the democratic voters are voting to get stuff check it out. conservatism in my humble opinion did not lose last night it's just very difficult to beat santa claus it is practically impossible to beat santa claus people are not going to vote against santa claus especially if there are fifty percent of the voting public who want stuff

they want things and who is going to give them things president obama he knows it and he ran on it. you know we've been paying for that stuff all our lives it's. incredible even mitt romney himself blamed his loss on the president handing out gifts to minority women impoverished americans and of course therefore republicans think that if they can just keep the base of the base reagan's fictional welfare queen in there by and large dark skinned relatives from voting and republicans will begin to win again this is genuinely their strategy but there's something even more sinister than that in the republican plans the post election be little lean of democratic voters as moochers to use the words of iran as nothing. pre-election efforts to stop democratic voters vote in the last two years more than twenty restrictive voter suppression laws were passed by republicans in seventeen

states including five battleground states voter suppression id laws new obstacles to add to voter registration and cuts to early voting these were all used by republican state legislators governors and election officials are around the country to suppress the vote of working americans and particularly of minorities as mother jones uncovered the most notorious of these ploys the voter suppression idea laws disproportionately affects minorities young people and the poor are those whose sununu or if would refer to as the base the democrats base of the base despite president obama winning reelection these laws did indeed leave a mark on the elector. as opposed to election polls sponsored by our research in the a.f.l.-cio found democrats and minorities were far more likely to wait in long lines to vote obama voters were almost twice as likely to wait in

a long voting line as romney voters and that was no accident and african-americans or hispanics or more than twice as likely to wait in vote long voting lines as white voters and that was no accident what republicans didn't account for in this election was the effect that these laws would have on democratic voter enthusiasm and those turnout chanelle hardy the vice president the national urban league explain the surge in african-american voter for for example saying we've been struggling for many years in our communities with how we make the argument that our parents and grandparents have handed down to us you must vote because people fought and died for you to have the right to vote so it's become a little less motivating the further away you get from those really visceral memories of what it took to get to the polls but then you bring back a thirty five state assault on our ability to vote and are really starts getting reminiscent all the things our parents were telling us in our grandparents were

telling us become visceral to a new generation she's right republicans are hoping this minority enthusiasm wanes after another round of voter i suppression id laws in two thousand and thirteen is an off year for elections i think we're going to be painted as a mess in b.c. report republicans in montana and the battleground states of virginia iowa and nevada are already right now here enough to pass more voter suppression id laws or make existing laws even more restrictive in the upcoming legislative sessions. it was constant republican assembly speaker robin vos floated the idea of his state adopting a new voter suppression id law too in a recent interview said every photo i do is something that is broadly supported by the public and is something that i really hope we will have in place by the next general election republicans like sununu mase sleep well at night i don't know maybe she's faking it because some of them honestly believe that they're protecting

the nation from that nearly half of the electorate that now relies on government insurance programs to get by as a result of the damage that the banks has caused to our economy in two thousand and seven or two thousand and eight or because they're retired disabled people like sununu believe that if they can just keep the poor and minority voters from the polling stations on election day then the republicans are going to win and then they can cut loose the social safety net then they can stop government spending to help people down on their luck and they can assure in a new era of iran randian personal responsibility in fact most americans would likely agree with ted nugent when the washington times recently called for suspending the right to vote of any american who is on welfare but the real truth here is the republicans have frankly just never been all that interested in democracy fact if you say this is a democracy the signal is a republican from the battles between jefferson and the federalists over how our

senate would be elected to the numerous suffrage fights for african-americans and women but always they always always confronted fierce opposition from conservatives more democracy always meant less power for the rich and that has always unsettled the hard right speaking to this point for example prominent conservative strategist paul weyrich said this in one thousand nine hundred. how many of our christian have what i call for goose syndrome good government they want everybody to vote. i don't want everybody to vote elections are not won by a majority of people they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now as a matter of fact our leverage in the elections why can't it like go up owning populace go down. where it went on to found the american legislative exchange council alec which not so coincidentally authored several of those restrictive

voter suppression idea laws passed around the nation in two thousand and ten two thousand and eleven and two thousand and twelve point is republicans are not going to rest in their efforts to suppress poor and minority votes voters in future elections if anything they're ramping it up senator barbara boxer gets this which is why she plans to introduce an election reform bill that would put an end to long voter lines by creating federal standards to ensure that polling stations are properly equipped and staffed but that's just the bare minimum of what needs to be done ultimately patriotic americans will only win this fight when a federal right to vote is guaranteed for every eligible american and eligible means working people poor people and minorities every bit as much as it means rich republicans the federal right to vote will effectively neuter politically motivated state lawmakers and election officials who frankly care less about

a robust democracy and more about rigging elections. there's no time to celebrate electoral victories because to keep up with the right's real what was assault on voters the fight over voting rights in america must continue three hundred sixty five days a year only after a federal right to vote is in shrine in our constitution or passed into law by congress and then survives the test of the supreme court only then can we know for sure that our elections are secure and that our democracy reflects the values and the voice of all of them and that's the way it is tonight wednesday december fifth two thousand and twelve for more information check out our website at target dot com free speech dot com dot org r t dot com and hulu dot com slash the big picture and don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport it requires you to show up get out there get active tag your it occupied so you see them on.

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